HDD capacity

William J. Burlingame

I am considering an external HDD (USB/Firewire). I would like to be
able to use the drive on each of my systems. I have two rather new
desktops and two older laptops. Does the BIOS have anything to do
with the maximum drive capacity recognized by the OS's (Win XP and Win
2K) of an external drive connected to a computer via the USB port? The
BIOS on the laptops will not recognize more than 32GB. I would like
to get something in the 200GB range. The desktops have USB 2.0 and
Firewire, but the laptops have only USB 1.1. This is strictly for
backup.
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Bill Burlingame

R

Rod Speed

I am considering an external HDD (USB/Firewire). I would like to be
able to use the drive on each of my systems. I have two rather new
desktops and two older laptops. Does the BIOS have anything to do
with the maximum drive capacity recognized by the OS's (Win XP and
Win 2K) of an external drive connected to a computer via the USB port?
Nope.

Rod Speed

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Andrew

: I am considering an external HDD (USB/Firewire). I would like to be
: able to use the drive on each of my systems. I have two rather new
: desktops and two older laptops. Does the BIOS have anything to do
: with the maximum drive capacity recognized by the OS's (Win XP and Win
: 2K) of an external drive connected to a computer via the USB port? The
: BIOS on the laptops will not recognize more than 32GB. I would like
: to get something in the 200GB range. The desktops have USB 2.0 and
: Firewire, but the laptops have only USB 1.1. This is strictly for
: backup.

Do get USB 2.0 PC Cards for your laptops. Since they cost only about
$20 now and they will save you hours and hours of transfer time, they
are well worth the investment. I've used one for a while and it works
without a hitch with my external hard drives. Even if you backup
overnight, you might still be waiting in the morning for the backups
to finish with USB 1.1.

Francis

I am considering an external HDD (USB/Firewire). I would like to be
able to use the drive on each of my systems. I have two rather new
desktops and two older laptops. Does the BIOS have anything to do
with the maximum drive capacity recognized by the OS's (Win XP and Win
2K) of an external drive connected to a computer via the USB port? The
BIOS on the laptops will not recognize more than 32GB. I would like
to get something in the 200GB range. The desktops have USB 2.0 and
Firewire, but the laptops have only USB 1.1. This is strictly for
backup.

From my own recent experience, avoid those enclosures that use the
ALi USB-to-IDE bridge chipset. You computer's BIOS doesn't have
anything to do with recognising large-sized external drives, but
the bridge chip does and the ALi (forget the exact model number)
I encountered doesn't support anything larger than 128GB.

So, get one with the Cypress Semi AT2 or Oxford chipset. They seem
to be quite good. I've got one of each and have no complaints
about their performance.

William J. Burlingame

Seems like a good idea. I often wondered how well the 2.0 adapters
work on an older computer. It's a 333Mhz Toshiba that doesn't get a
lot of use, but I would like to back it up on occasion. I'll not
replace it until it dies or it won't run some piece of SW I need to
run on it.

---------------------------------------------------------------

bs has been included as part of my e-mail address to reduce the
amount of spam mail. Change the 'bs'in my address to 'bellsouth'
to send me a message.

Bill Burlingame

F

Francis

Seems like a good idea. I often wondered how well the 2.0 adapters
work on an older computer. It's a 333Mhz Toshiba that doesn't get a
lot of use, but I would like to back it up on occasion. I'll not
replace it until it dies or it won't run some piece of SW I need to
run on it.

Technically, there shouldn't be any problems, I'd think. I've got
a ThinkPad 600e that I plugged a DLink USB2.0 cardbus into and it
works just fine. The TP is running Win2000 Pro.

There's one thing, though, I've my external DVD writer and HD on
the card. I can read CD/DVDs from the external DVD drive and write
them to the external HD just fine. But, I can't read from the
external drive and write to the external DVD. It always fails
because, it seems, the HD can't keep up with the buffering demand.
The HD is, BTW, a Western Digital WD2500JB in a USB2.0 enclosure.
I'm not sure whether the card/driver is the problem, the CPU (P2/300)
or it's just not designed well enough to work.

Anyhow, to your original question, a USB2.0 cardbus shouldn't be
a problem. I suggest avoiding the generic ALi chipset ones. They
consistently bluescreened my TP. DLink, SIIG, Adaptec cards should
work fine.

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William J. Burlingame

I got my external HDD, but I didn't buy the USB 2.0 cardbus yet.
CompUSA had a $70 instant discount on a Maxtor 250GB drive. They were
out of stock on the Maxtor and substituted Hitachi. I bought a store
brand USB 2.0 enclosure and all seems to work well. I'll look into
the 2.0 cardbus soon. All in all it was $99.99 for the 250GB HDD and
$29.95 for the enclosure. I'm running with XP Pro and Win2k on my
machines. I copied a compressed Drive Image file of my primary system
to the external drive and it took about 15 minutes to copy 22GB. I
didn't actually time it, but that was the time posted in the copy
window. I haven't tried the laptop yet. It's only using about 5 GB of
a 30 GB drive. I haven't used Drive Image on it yet to create a
backup. So far so good.

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bs has been included as part of my e-mail address to reduce the
amount of spam mail. Change the 'bs'in my address to 'bellsouth'
to send me a message.